Coming of Age

Coming of age is an important theme in the novel “One Came Home” by Amy Timberlake. Coming of age involves the personal, spiritual, moral, or emotional growth and maturation of an individual often based on real world experiences, events, or mistakes. In the novel, it is Georgie who comes of age in many ways.

When the novel begins, Georgie is a sweet, intelligent, practical, and pretty thirteen year-old girl who has spent nearly her entire life in Placid, Wisconsin. She has been raised to tend the house, the store, and to handle herself outdoors with firearms. Though she has limited experience of the world beyond Placid, she is nevertheless content and happy with her own world. However, the departure and supposed death of Agatha shakes the town up, and shakes Georgie to her core.

Georgie believes that Agatha is not dead, and so sets...